I Suck At Social Media, But I'm Glad It Exists.

Like most animals in the world, my family seems to have a thing with booking a 2 person flight to the bone zone during the Spring time (at least I think it is a 2 person deal, knowing some of them, it may include more, but I'm not even close enough to interested to ask). December, January, and February are busy birthday months due to this natural drive to get down when nature is blooming and keeping up can be a rough ordeal. Thankfully, the world was gifted the likes of Facebook.

Being able to login and see right away who is having a birthday that day and then judging whether or not it is more appropriate to leave a message on their wall or text them directly is the right call depending upon the relationship. Maybe we are supposed to do both? I'm not sure... is texting and then posting on their wall too much of a "respond to me! Acknowledge my existence with a reply on the day celebrating the anniversary of when you Alien'd your way out of your Mother's naughty bits!" sort of thing? Do I tweet at them #getdrunk #happybirthday #cryifyouwantto #noticemesempai? Do I leave a comment on their birthday related Instagram photos? Do I send a snapchat? Should it be a picture or a video? The most important question, do I send dick pics!? (no, never, don't do that). Social media is hard!

In general, I tend to be a bit of a lurker in the social media world. I scroll through and occasionally reply to posts that get my attention and when I can think of something relatively clever to say, but for the most part my own Facebook wall is a barren wasteland of nothing. I have plenty of links to this website, because... promoting is the right thing to do? I don't re-post much of anything, share much of anything, link to much of anything, or give clever commentary on my daily life. This isn't because I'm the sort of hipster that will say something silly like "Facebook is dumb," because honestly, I think it is one of the better tools for social interaction that has come out in, ever. I've reconnected with a great deal of people that would have likely not come back into my life without it and it reminds me of important upcoming events, like mentioned above. However, I'm just not good at it.

I constantly forget my phone has a camera, so updated pictures come in the form of being tagged by someone else, and judging whether or not they captured my likeness in a fashion I wish to share with the world or if I should sneak delete the tag. I haven't logged into Twitter in over a year, I don't have an Instagram, I downloaded snapchat but haven't opened the app in months, I haven't updated my Linkedin in god knows how long. What is Linkedin good for? Can anyone really tell me? I don't understand it. Something about jobs, maybe? How do people keep up with all of it?

I work around and interact with so many people that post on all of these social media sites multiple times a day, reply to all kinds of posts, share all the stuff, and in general are quite awesome with making social media work for them. I get exhausted trying to think of something to say in an update of my own, I just stare at the little box for a few moments, type in 'FUCK!!!" erase it, then go do something else.

I had thought about letting this whole post turn into a little talk about the overall impact of social media on society, its transformation of communication and the studies done on that, but I realize that can be quite the topic to dive into. So, maybe later. Instead, I'll just let it be this. I suck at social media, but I like it.

I should end this with something witty, maybe... umm... lets see here.